Toree 3D Is a Great, Compact Platformer With Minimal Fluff

December 1st, 2021

Having bite-sized levels at the comically low price of $1, Toree 3D fills a niche gap in the video game market for nice, short experiences when it comes to 3D platformers. Thanks to its straightforward nature, it’s accessible enough for almost anyone to pick up and play.

On April 9th, 2021, Toree 3D was released to the world on Steam and the Switch eShop for a simple 99¢. While it had a cute art style reminiscent of the 32-bit era, it launched with a rather quiet release for its first few days. The game received significantly more attention shortly afterwards thanks to a Nintendo Life video pitting it against Square Enix’s then-recent flop: Balan Wonderworld. It swiftly gained the title “Game better than Balan for only $1,” and to a degree has yet to shake it off. This begs the question: is it more than another game’s shadow?

And in short, yes!

The concept and controls are extremely simple: you’re a somewhat-floaty bird that can jump with one button, and dash with another. That’s it. You run through a linear stage as quickly as possible, with bonus stars being on harder paths or off to the side. All other mechanics are bound to specific levels, ranging from fans propelling at angles, conveyor belts on a freeway to help zoom through traffic, using ice to slide across gaps at high speed, etc.

Movement is the core focus, and the developers did their best to expand upon it in every way with such a limited scope and moveset. Only having nine levels, each one tries something different while still keeping a sense of progression to the established rules.

Each of the stages are rather beefy and run for a few minutes, while also never going for too long and overstaying their welcome. This also lends itself well to the core focus: speedrunning. Taking inspiration from the Sonic series, each stage has individual rankings based off of performance to help incentivize replay value.

Beating the game itself will take no time flat, but the real meat of the game is learning the levels and physics to where you almost never have to stop. Thanks to the tight controls, revisiting stages after getting better at the mechanics feels fun and rewarding to blast through. It gives the game a brilliant rhythm that’s hidden at first, but shows its true nature further in as the ranking system becomes more clear. There are also unlockable characters with different moves to incentivize mastering the game.

Stage 4 (Neo Osaka) is one the cleanest examples of this, with the level taking place on a busy highway jumping from truck-to-truck. Thanks to the conveyors propelling Toree along, it teaches a hidden pattern to the player that you never have to stop unless you fall off the beat, giving an elusive S-rank. And while Neo Osaka is the most obvious example, almost every other level follows it to a tee.

Toree 3D is an easy recommendation to anyone with an interest in platforming thanks to its extremely affordable price and pick-up-and-play nature. It’s one of the cheapest platformers on the eShop, deserving just as much love as the big $60 AAA titles. And for only $1? It’s hard to go wrong!

All images used in this review are screenshots from Toree 3D by Siactro.